I’m doing a timelaspe on a Aaton prod XTR with an intervalometer. The shot will be of traffic/people at dusk going into night and last for ca 30s. Any advice about framerate? How many/often etc to make it look like a busy city street? I was thinking maybe 1f every 4s, any comments?

Thank you,

Annika Summerson
Student cinematographer
London

One approach would be to think about how long you want the shot to last in real time and in screen time.
1 frame every 4 seconds would be about 100 times faster than real time. So your 30 second shot (which is quite long) would cover 3,000 seconds - that's 50 minutes.
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Dominic Case
Atlab Australia
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ANNIKA wrote :

>>How many/often etc to make it look like a busy city street? I was thinking maybe 1f every 4s, any >>comments?

My advice is to overshoot as much as possible. then you can edit it down. The problem with time lapse is that there tend to be overwhelming dull moments interspersed with few good sequences. If you choose too long a frame rate, the interesting parts can't be stretched out and end up looking like blibs of Benny Hill episodes on amphetamines.

If possible, scout the location ahead of time to get a rough idea what goes on and calculate a frame rate accordingly. Or if you will be present & operate the camera for the whole night, you can adjust on the fly the frame rate.